Here are a few investments you may want to consider:

• Retirement account – Depending on the nature of your business and how many employees you have, you can choose from a variety of tax-advantaged retirement plans, such as an owner-only 401(k), an SEP-IRA and a SIMPLE IRA. By contributing regularly to one of these accounts, you can avoid being entirely dependent on the sale of your business to pay for your retirement years.
• To fund your 401(k) or other retirement plan, you’ll have many investment options — stocks, bonds, mutual funds and so on. And if you “max out” on your retirement plan, you may even be able to build a separate investment portfolio. In any case, keep in mind that you’re already putting a lot of money into your business, so, to achieve a level of diversification, you may want to concentrate your investment choices in areas outside your industry. However, while diversification can help reduce the impact of market volatility on your portfolio, it can’t guarantee profits or protect against losses in a declining market.
• Property – Your physical space is a key part of your business’ success. So, you may want to invest some time in comparing the pros and cons of renting versus owning. Of course, owning your building may require a big financial commitment, and it may not be feasible, but it could free you from worrying about untimely rent increases.
• Disaster protection – If a fire or a weather-related disaster should strike your business, would you be prepared? It’s important for you to create a disaster recovery plan, which can include business interruption insurance to pay for your operating costs if you’re forced to shut down for a while.
• Emergency savings – While a disaster protection plan with appropriate insurance can help keep your business afloat, it’s unlikely to cover other types of emergency needs, such as a major medical bill or an expensive repair to your home. For these unexpected costs, you may want to build an emergency fund covering at least a few months’ worth of living expenses, with the money kept in a liquid account. Without such an emergency fund, you may be forced to dip into your 401(k), IRA or other long-term investment vehicle.

You’ll also want to invest the time and energy into creating a business succession plan. Will you keep the business in your family? Sell it to outsiders or a key employee? If you do sell, will you do it all at once or over time? Clearly, the answers to these types of questions will make a big difference in your ultimate financial security.

Finally, invest in help – Enlist the services of a financial advisor and business-planning professional, so you’ll be able to make the decisions that work best for your business and you.

Your business may well be a lifelong endeavor — so make sure you’re investing whatever it takes to earn a lifetime of benefits.

But you may not know about some other estate-planning issues that could prove important in your life:

• Power of attorney for students – Children heading off to college may be considered legal adults in many states. Consequently, you, as a parent, may not have any control over medical treatment if your child faces a sudden, serious illness or is involved in an accident. Instead, a doctor who doesn’t know your child or your family may decide on a course of action of which you might not approve. To help prevent this, you may want to have your college student sign a medical power of attorney form, which will allow you to make decisions on your child’s behalf if doctors don’t think your child can make those choices. You might also want to combine the medical power of attorney with an advance health care directive or living will, which lets you specify actions you do or don’t want to happen. In any case, consult with your legal advisor before taking any of these steps.
  
• Community property versus common law – Not all states treat married couples’ possessions equally. If you live in a community property state, the property you acquire during your marriage is generally considered to be owned in equal halves by each spouse, with some exceptions. But if you live in a common law state, the property you obtain while you’re married is not automatically owned by both spouses. In these states, if you buy some property, you own it, unless you decide to put it in the name of yourself and your spouse.
• This doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that your spouse has no rights, because common law states typically have rules that guard surviving spouses from being disinherited. But here’s the key point: If you move from a community property state to a common law state, or vice versa, you might not want to assume that your and your spouse’s property ownership situations will remain the same. Consequently, if you do move, you may want to consult an estate-planning attorney in your new state to determine where you stand.

• Pet trusts – You always strive to take good care of your pets. But what might happen to them if you become incapacitated in some way? Unless you have a close family member or friend who’s willing to take over care for your pet, you might want to consider setting up a pet trust, which can take effect either during your lifetime or after you pass away. A trustee typically will make payments to the caregiver you’ve designated for your pet, with payments continuing for the pet’s lifetime or a set number of years. Again, an estate-planning attorney can help you with this arrangement.
  
  Estate planning certainly involves the big-picture issue of leaving a legacy to the next generation. But the issues we’ve discussed can also be meaningful to you, so you’ll want to address them properly.
  

A blended family must deal with some specific financial issues, so it’s a good idea to become familiar with them.

In particular, consider these areas:

• Separate or joint accounts? – Should your two family units combine all your finances or maintain separate accounts? There’s no one correct answer for everyone, because this issue has emotional and psychological components to it, as well as financial considerations. But the nature of your new, blended family might guide you to a choice that makes sense for your situation.
  So, for example, if you are remarrying at a later stage in life, and you and your new spouse have adult children, you might think the best move is to keep separate accounts. But if you are joining households with a spouse or partner with younger children, you may want to merge accounts to pay for household expenses and work toward your new, shared financial objectives. And it doesn’t have to be an “either-or” approach — you might decide to blend some accounts and keep others separate.
• Debts and credit ratings – It’s likely that you and your new spouse or partner, and perhaps even some children, will bring debts into your blended family. As these debts can affect your family’s finances in several ways, including your ability to borrow and your credit ratings, you will want to know what everyone owes, and the amount of monthly payments needed to meet these obligations. After that, you may be able to find ways to consolidate debts or find other ways to reduce or eliminate them.
• Legal issues – When you establish a blended family, you may want to review, and possibly update, the beneficiary designations on your life insurance policy and retirement accounts, such as your IRA and 401(k). These designations can supersede instructions you may have left in your estate planning documents — including your last will and testament — so it’s important to ensure they reflect your current wishes. And speaking of your estate plans, you may well need to revise them, too, in consultation with your attorney.
• Attitudes toward money – Attitudes toward money — yours and those of your new spouse or partner — should be addressed when starting a blended family. Is one of you more of a saver while the other spends more freely? As investors, does one of you favor taking more risk while the other is more conservative? It’s important to reconcile these differences as best you can, especially if you plan on merging your finances. This means that you both may need to compromise somewhat, but you should strive to avoid having either of you feeling uncomfortable in your choices. In any case, open and honest communication is the first step in achieving a harmonious financial strategy.
  These aren’t the only financial considerations involved with blended families, but they should give you some things to think about — and the earlier you start thinking about them, the better.

Some of the same ideas involved in tidying up your home can also be used to help put your financial house in order. Here are a few suggestions:

• Dust off your investment strategy. As you look around your home, you might find that many items — tables, desks, bookshelves, and computer and television screens — could benefit from a good dusting. And, once you’ve accomplished this, you’ll get a clearer view of all these objects.

Similarly, your investment strategy needs to be “dusted off” every so often, so you can see if it’s still working to help you move toward your financial goals, such as a comfortable retirement. Over time, your personal circumstances and risk tolerance can change, and these changes may lead you to reexamine your future financial and investment decisions.

• De-clutter your portfolio. if you took a survey of your home, would you find duplicates or even triplicates of some things — brooms, vacuum cleaners, toasters, and so on? If so, it may be time to do some de-cluttering. And the same could be true of your portfolio — you might have several identical, or substantially identical, investments taking up space.

If so, you might want to replace these redundancies with investments that can improve your diversification. While diversification can’t guarantee profits or protect against losses in a declining market, it may help reduce the impact of market volatility on your holdings.

• Get organized. If your closets are overstuffed, with clothes and miscellaneous items crammed on shelves and the floor, you may well have trouble finding what you’re looking for — but with a little straightening up, your searches will become much easier. And when you’re trying to locate financial documents, such as investment statements or insurance policies, you’ll also benefit from having everything organized in one central location. Even if you get most of these documents online, you can save what you need and keep them in a file on your desktop, laptop or tablet.

(And it’s also a good idea to tell your spouse, adult child or another close relative how these documents can be accessed, just in case something happens to you.)

• Protect yourself from dangers. If you look around your garage, shed or other storage area, you may well find some objects — such as gardening tools, paint thinners, engine fluids and leaning ladders — that could be dangerous if they aren’t stored properly.

As part of your spring cleaning, you’ll want to remove these hazards to safeguard yourself and your family. But have you addressed the various financial risks that could threaten your loved ones? For example, if something were to happen to you, could your family members maintain their lifestyle? Could your children still go to college? To guard against this risk, you may want to discuss protection strategies with a financial professional.

Spring cleaning can pay off — in a cleaner, safer home environment and in helping ensure your financial strategy continues to work hard for you.

If you’re going to enjoy a comfortable retirement, you should know, among other things, how much money you’ll need.

And you may have a much better chance of knowing this if you get some professional help.

Consider these findings from a 2021 study by Dalbar, a financial services market research firm:

• Investors who worked with a financial advisor were three times more likely to estimate what they would have saved at retirement than “do-it-yourself” investors.
• More than two-thirds of investors with a financial advisor were satisfied with the amount they would have saved at retirement, compared to about 27% of the do-it-yourselfers.

How do financial professionals help their clients in these ways?

First, consider the issue of determining how much money will be needed for retirement. It’s not always easy for individuals to estimate this amount. But financial professionals can help clients like you arrive at this figure by exploring your hopes and goals. How long do you plan to work? What kind of lifestyle do you anticipate enjoying in retirement? Where would you like to live? How much would you like to travel?

Are you open to pursuing earned income opportunities, such as consulting or working part time?
Next comes the other key question: How much money will be available for retirement? This big question leads to many others: How much do you need to save and invest each year until you retire? About what sort of investment return will you need to reach your retirement income goals? What level of risk are you willing to take to achieve that return? What is the role of other income sources such as Social Security or any pensions you might have?

Having a financial professional help you gain a clear idea of your retirement income picture can certainly be reassuring. But there may be other reasons why “going it alone” as an investor might not be desirable.

For example, when the financial markets are down, as was the case for much of 2022, some investors make decisions based on short-term volatility, such as selling investments to “cut their losses,” even if these same investments still have solid business fundamentals and good prospects for growth.

But if you work with a financial professional, you might decide to stick with these investments, especially if they’re still appropriate for your long-term strategy. Other times, of course, the advice may be different — but it will always be advice based on your goals, needs and time horizon.

Furthermore, if you’re investing on your own, you may always be measuring your results against the major market indexes, such as the S&P 500 or the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

But in reality, your portfolio should contain a wide range of investments, some of which aren’t contained in these indexes, so you might not be assessing your performance appropriately. A financial professional can help you develop your own, more meaningful benchmarks that can show the progress you’re actually making toward your goals.

In some areas of life, going it alone can be exciting — but when it comes to investing for your future, you may benefit from some company on the journey.

Factors such as economic concerns and the sharp rise in inflation seem to be driving this greater interest in building an emergency fund. But it’s extremely valuable to maintain this type of fund in any economic environment. An emergency fund can help you prepare for a temporary job loss or early retirement, or pay for large home or auto repairs, sizable medical bills and other needs.

So, how much do you need to keep in an emergency fund? The answer depends on your stage of life. If you’re still working, you might want at least three to six months’ worth of living expenses in your emergency fund. If you’re already retired, however, you may need at least three months’ worth of expenses for emergencies, plus another 12 months’ worth of expenses, after accounting for your other sources of income, to cover your everyday spending needs.

And if you are retired, it’s especially important to maintain this larger emergency fund so you can avoid dipping into your investment portfolio to pay for any unforeseen costs and daily expenses. As you know, the financial markets can be volatile, so, if it’s possible, you’ll want to avoid having to sell investments when their prices may be down.

When building an emergency fund, where should you keep the money? You’ll need it to be accessible, so you’ll want it in a liquid investment vehicle.

At the same time, you don’t want to take risks with this fund, so you’ll want to be confident that your principal will likely be preserved. Some possibilities might include short-term certificates of deposit (CDs) or money market accounts. But wherever you put the money, keep it separate from your regular checking or savings account — it’s called an “emergency” fund for a reason, and you don’t want to mingle it with the accounts you use every day.

Given the high cost of living, it’s not always easy to sock away money for emergencies — and if you wait until all your bills are paid before addressing an emergency fund, you may only make very slow progress.

One possible strategy is to pay yourself first, so to speak, by having some money automatically moved from your checking or savings account each month into your emergency fund. And whenever you get a financial windfall, such as a tax refund or a year-end bonus at work, you might use some of it for this fund.

It will take time and discipline to build and maintain an emergency fund.

But once you’ve got such a fund in place, you’ll feel more confident in your ability to deal with unexpected costs that could potentially disrupt your progress toward your financial goals. So, make it a priority this year to build or strengthen your emergency fund. It will be worth the effort.

It’s something worth thinking about, because any number of factors — illness, a spouse’s illness, downsizing, other issues — could lead to an abrupt departure from the workforce. But taking action while you’re still working may help you make the transition easier on yourself.

Your first move, of course, should be to at least consider the possibility of having to retire earlier than you planned. You can then move on to some concrete steps, possibly including the following.

• Build an emergency fund. Under any circumstances, it’s a good idea to build an emergency fund — but it’s especially important if you want to prepare for an unforeseen retirement. Generally speaking, your emergency fund should contain three to six months’ worth of living expenses, with the money kept in a liquid, low-risk account. But if you suspect an earlier-than-anticipated retirement may be in your future, and you have some time to prepare for it, you should consider an emergency fund that contains a full year’s worth of expenses.

• Consider your portfolio’s asset allocation. If you’re concerned about an unexpected retirement, you may want to consider the equities allocation in your portfolio.

If you think you may need to tap into your portfolio sooner than you expected, you may not want to be over-exposed to investments most vulnerable to market volatility.

However, these are the same investments that offer you the most growth potential — which you’ll need to help stay ahead of inflation. So, look for an investment balance that’s appropriate for your needs. As part of this positioning, you may want to shift some assets into income-producing vehicles, while also adding to the “cash” portion of your portfolio to boost your liquidity.

• Evaluate your Social Security options. An unplanned retirement may cause you to consider taking Social Security earlier than you had planned.

You can start taking Social Security when you’re 62, but your monthly benefits will be up to 30% lower than if you had waited until your full retirement age, which is likely between 66 and 67. If you have sufficient income through other sources, you may be able to delay taking Social Security until your checks will be bigger — but of course, if you need the money, waiting may not be an option.

• Address your health care needs. If you take an unplanned retirement, and you have employer-sponsored health insurance, you’ll have to look for alternatives. You might be able to get extended coverage from your employer, but this could be quite expensive.

Of course, if you’re already 65, you can get on Medicare, but if you’re younger, you might be able to get coverage under your spouse’s plan. If that’s not an option, you may want to explore one of the health care exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act. To learn more about these exchanges, visit healthcare.gov.

Taking an unexpected retirement can certainly be challenging – but the more prepared you are, the better your outcomes are likely to be.

Here’s the story: Under current law, Social Security is estimated to exhaust its trust funds by 2035, after which benefits could be cut by 20%, according to the 2022 Social Security Trustees report.

However, the large cost of living adjustment (COLA) (8.7%) for 2023 could cause the trust funds to use up their resources sooner.

But this outlook may represent a worst-case scenario.

For one thing, the cost of the 2023 COLA will be somewhat offset by higher taxes on workers contributing to Social Security. The maximum amount of earnings subject to the 6.2% Social Security tax jumped from $147,000 in 2022 to $160,200 in 2023.

And in looking down the road, further increases in this earnings cap may also help reduce the gap in the trust funds. Increasing the payroll tax is another possibility for boosting funding to Social Security.

And here’s a political reality: Social Security is a popular program and it’s unlikely that any future Congress wants to be blamed for reducing benefits.

Of course, there are no guarantees, but it seems fair to say that you can reasonably expect some benefits from Social Security when you retire.

But perhaps the bigger issue is just how much you should depend on Social Security for your retirement income. On average, Social Security benefits will provide about 30% of a beneficiary’s preretirement earnings, according to the Social Security Administration. But the higher your earnings before you retire, the lower the percentage that will be replaced by Social Security.

Still, you’ll want to maximize the benefits that are available to you — and that means deciding when to start taking Social Security. You can begin as early as 62, but your monthly payments could be as much as 30% lower than your normal (or “full”) retirement age, which will likely be between 66 and 67.

Even if you were to wait until your full retirement age before collecting Social Security, you’ll also need to draw on other sources of funding. So, while you are still working, it’s a good idea to keep contributing to your IRA and 401(k) or other employer-sponsored retirement plan.

The amount you contribute should depend on your overall financial strategy and your financial needs, so, for example, you probably shouldn’t put in so much into your retirement accounts that you feel significant stress in your monthly cash flow. But when you do get a chance to invest more in these accounts, such as when your salary goes up, you may want to take advantage of the opportunity.

Ultimately, you should be able to count on Social Security as part of your retirement income. You may want to consult with a financial professional to determine when taking Social Security makes the most sense for you and how you can also get the most from your other retirement accounts. You’ll want a retirement income strategy that’s built for the long run.